Stephanie Smith and her Marine Corps husband Paul.
Stephanie Smith is grateful her Marine Corps husband Paul will be paid during the government shutdown.
But the shutdown has hurt military families, like hers, in countless other ways.
Childcare programs have been scratched, subsidized military grocery stores are closed, non-essential medical care has been cut back, and kids' sports programs have been canceled.
That means the Smith family grocery bill will go up by $200 a month if the shutdown lasts that long.
But what hurts most for Smith is the cancellation of the soccer program for her daughters, aged 12, 9 and 5. For her, it's those little things that count -- the glue that holds a hard military life together. Like many military families, hers also has to constantly move locations and suffer through years without seeing her husband, who was most recently deployed in Afghanistan.